Mercedes-Benz Teases ‘Highest-Efficiency Electric Car In the World’ With Over 750 Miles of Range

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Mercedes-Benz teases a new super-efficient electric car concept, the Vision EQXX, with more than 750 miles of range on a single charge. At Daimler’s latest company update, the automaker teased a new technical program to develop “the longest-range and highest-efficiency electric car the world has ever seen.” Mercedes-Benz’s head of research and development,…

An electrical trigger fires single, identical photons

Secure telecommunications networks and rapid information processing make much of modern life possible. To provide more secure, faster, and higher-performance information sharing than is currently possible, scientists and engineers are designing next-generation devices that harness the rules of quantum physics. Those designs rely on single photons to encode and transmit information across quantum networks and between quantum chips. However, tools for…

IonQ announces development of next-generation quantum computer

IonQ, a College Park, Maryland-based quantum computing hardware and software company has announced that it has launched its next generation quantum computer. As part of its announcement, the company is claiming that its new machine is the most powerful quantum computer built to date based on IBM’s quantum volume metric. The company has also announced that the new computer will be…

D-Wave’s 5,000-Qubit Quantum Computing Platform Handles 1 Million Variables

D-Wave today launched its next-generation quantum computing platform available via its Leap quantum cloud service. The company calls Advantage “the first quantum computer built for business.” In that vein, D-Wave today also debuted Launch, a jump-start program for businesses that want to begin building hybrid quantum applications. From a report: “The Advantage quantum computer is the first quantum computer designed and…

America’s Air Force Secretly Designed, Built, and Flew a Brand-New Fighter Jet

“The U.S. Air Force revealed this week that it has secretly designed, built, and tested a new prototype fighter jet,” reports Popular Mechanics:
According to Defense News, the Air Force developed the new fighter in about a year — a staggeringly short amount of time by modern standards. The Air Force first developed a virtual version of the jet, and then proceeded…

Daimler Shows Off Long-Range Hydrogen Semi, New Battery Truck

Daimler, which has worked on hydrogen technology for decades, is developing a fuel-cell semi with range of up to 600 miles per fueling and next-generation battery trucks amid intensifying competition to curb diesel and carbon exhaust from heavy-duty vehicles. Forbes reports: The German auto giant’s truck unit showed off the Mercedes-Benz GenH2, a concept truck designed for long haul runs that…

Facebook Will Release Its First AR Glasses in 2021

During Facebook Connect — the replacement for the AR/VR event previously known as Oculus Connect — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today that the company is planning to release its first pair of augmented reality glasses in 2021. From a report: While the company’s Oculus unit has become a leading provider of VR headsets, Facebook has touted AR as the next…

Lead lab selected for next-generation cosmic microwave background experiment

The largest collaborative undertaking yet to explore the relic light emitted by the infant universe has taken a step forward with the U.S. Department of Energy’s selection of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) to lead the partnership of national labs, universities, and other institutions that are joined in the effort to carry out the DOE roles and responsibilities. This next-generation…

SpaceX Launched and Landed Another Starship Prototype

“SpaceX took another step forward Thursday in developing its next-generation Starship rocket, conducting the second short flight test of a prototype in the past month,” reports CNBC:
Starship prototype Serial Number 6, or SN6, took off from the launchpad at SpaceX’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas. It gradually rose to about 500 feet above the ground before it returned back to land,…

Silicon ‘Sandwiches’ Make For Lightweight, High-Capacity Batteries

A team at Clemson University has come up with a new design that overcomes some of the problems with incorporating silicon into lithium-ion batteries, “enabling them to demonstrate a lightweight and multipurpose device that could be used to power satellites and spacesuits,” reports New Atlas. From the report: Scientists have been investigating the potential of silicon in lithium-ion batteries for a…